People sometimes ask me to make maps bigger. As if it’s that easy.. Jut change a variable right?

Well. No. First of all you break compatibility with every other source engine game. Then you need to ship your own version of hammer, vis, vbsp, vrad etc.. Then you need to change all the network code to support the bigger coord system (every coord would now use more bits).Then you’ve got to think of the ramifications of having bigger maps. For things like flatgrass it’s fine.. But there’s a reason maps are a limited size. If the maps twice the size, that’s twice the lightmaps, twice the ai nodes, twice the entites, twice the vis data, twice the env cubemaps. So loading your map takes twice the memory, and is twice the size. We now have 600mb maps.

And finally… Why bother? Yeah it sucks that you can’t build a to scale 747 and simulate an 8 hour flight from London to new York, but do you really need to.